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Monday, January 2, 2012

Death and Marriage Records in the 1875 NY Census

The 1875 New York State census is available at FamilySearch.org. Family Search made the images available before indexing them which worked to my advantage. (Some of the 1875 census has been indexed and is searchable, however Jefferson County does not yet show up in a search.) I had several families that I wanted to find in Adams, Jefferson, New York and so I started browsing page by page. I got lucky and found my great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother on image 7, page 13 of the 1st election district, Adams, Jefferson, New York.

Previously I had known that my great-great-grandfather, Michael Kelly had died between the 1870 and 1880 censuses. Now I had narrowed the date down to between 1870 and 1875. (Official death records were not kept in New York prior to 1881 so I will not be able to find a death certificate.)

I might have stopped paging through the census there, however there were many other relatives that lived in Adams so I continued on. Much to my surprise on image 23, page 45 was a record of Marriages that had occurred between 1 June 1874 and 1 June 1875.

The names, ages and previous marital status are included as well as where the wedding took place and who performed the ceremony. No members of my family were included but I was curious as to what else might be hidden in the census and continued to the next page.

Deaths were next and there was my great-great-grandfather on page 46, line 10. Recorded as Micheall Kelley, age 49. He was born in Ireland, worked as a general laborer and died 12 Nov 1874 of pneumonia.

If I hadn't continued paging through the census I never would have found what is most likely the only death record there is for Michael Kelly. Lesson learned!

The 1875 census also includes agricultural schedules. There are several pages for each group of names. My ancestors were not included but this could be treasure for others.

Thank you SO much for sharing this! I just went to check it out and have found such a weird entry for my gg grandparents...a child I never knew they had, plus a "mother in law" b New Hampshire though her supposed daughter was b in England!

Thank you also for reminding me how much I love genealogy and a good mystery therein :)

Apple, I went to your other blog by mistake and was surprised to see that you'd changed the header from your little children of old to modern children. (They are cute children.) When I scrolled down and saw no family history. It was then I realized I was on the wrong blog! I'm so glad you didn't change the header. I love your photo of the children at the top of this blog.

I'm glad you're warm. I hope your health is good and that you had a good year.

Thanks for this post. My husband's family are Upstate New Yorkers. My daughter is sporadically working on their family history. I'll let her know about this collection of records.

I've actually used two different pictures for my header here. Both are of my Uncle Bill, Mom and Aunt Vivian. I wish I'd known how to do screen captures back when I started so that I could look back at all of the changes to my blogs over the years.